“The Urban Renewal Blues: the Destruction of the Old Maxwell Street Market”

e.polis Volume V, Fall/Winter 2012 35 “The Urban Renewal Blues: The Destruction of the Old Maxwell Street Market” “Urban renewal is overwhelmingly a matter of negotiation (tacit or explicit) among federal bureaucrats, local business aggregations, and city governments for whom “renovation” and “modernization” have a very special meaning. “Public” power does not countervail against “private” power – instead, the two combine to exclude from their plans the people most abruptly affected by their decisions.” Todd Gitlin1 Intro In September, 2000, a Daily Herald article touting Chicago’s upscale attached homes featured an ad for the University Village at South Campus. University Village was a series of townhomes, condominiums, and lofts built just south of the University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC). The construction was spearheaded by the South Campus Development Team, a joint venture company comprised of three developers: Mesirow Stein Real Estate Inc., New Frontier Companies, and the Harlem Irving Companies. They were building on land purchased and cleared by the City of Chicago and UIC. The two and three bedroom “Tear 1” townhomes ranged from $386,000 to $707,000, the two and three bedroom condos ranged from $190,500 to $259,900, and one to three bedroom lofts were available from $143,000 to $419,900 ($10,000 for street parking, $19,000 for indoor parking). Real estate sales were over $350 million in the area. The housing complex is on Halsted Street one block south of Maxwell Street built directly over a large portion of what was the old Maxwell Street Market.2 This was the grand finale for UIC and City Hall who had implemented policies concerning urban renewal through deceit and backroom deals. In 1989, at a panel on the future of Maxwell Street, university planners said 1 Thoughts of the Young Radicals (New Jersey: The New Republic, 1966). 2 “Chicago: Upscale Attached Homes Found Throughout,” Chicago Daily Herald, September 9, 2000; “No More Haggling,” Kokomo (IN) Tribune, August 27, 1994. e.polis Volume V, Fall/Winter 2012 36 that “despite rumors to the contrary” they did not “not anticipate building” townhomes in the area.3 This was five years before work began on the first condo developments. The story of renewal on Maxwell Street fits a larger pattern of urban renewal. Urban dwellers with little money or political power, often in the city’s worst housing stock, often people of color, watch as their neighborhoods are destroyed in the name of progress. If they are lucky, they might get a relocation check or preferential treatment when applying to housing projects. Renewal usually parallels deindustrialization and when capital moves to the suburbs, people with economic mobility, mostly second and third generation white ethnics, are able to follow. The less well-off are left behind in a central city with a decreasing tax base that provides them with fewer and lower quality services in their neighborhoods. Looking closely at the Maxwell Street Market we find that urban renewal was the product of decisions made by politically influential and economically powerful individuals and institutions that used public policy and money to bring to life their particular vision of the city while making handsome profits in the process. The Maxwell Street Market For most of its 120 year existence, the Maxwell Street Market extended east and west along Maxwell Street. Its eastern border was formed by the Chicago River and ran west to Blue Island Avenue. The market extended north to Roosevelt Road and south to 14th Street on several of the adjacent north and south streets. Halsted, running north and south, was a popular thoroughfare and the intersection of Maxwell and Halsted was the busiest section of the market.4 In the 1950's the Dan Ryan Expressway was erected in the midst of this urban marketplace disrupting the pushcarts, stalls, and tables. The Maxwell Street Market was originally an outdoor vegetable and 3 City of Chicago, Department of Planning, The Future of Maxwell Street Market (Chicago 1989), 44. 4Lori Grove and Laura Kamedulski, Chicago’s Maxwell Street (Chicago: Arcadia Publishing, 2002), 9. e.polis Volume V, Fall/Winter 2012 37 produce market serving the Jewish immigrant population who moved into Chicago’s Near West Side. In the 1880s, Eastern European Jews facing persecution in Russia and elsewhere came en masse to the United States, many ending up in Chicago. The Near West Side was a natural choice for many migrants because it was close the railroad station, and it was close to cheap housing and employment in lumber and stockyards. Jews brought their cultural tradition of the open-air market which made sense since it was difficult to get fresh produce and since 50,000 Jewish immigrants had arrived in the last two decades of the 19th century. An 1891 survey showed that 16,000 foreign born Jews lived along Maxwell Street. The merchants originally lined the busy Jefferson Street, but moved to the then residential Maxwell Street. In 1912, the city made the first policy to regulate the area. Twenty years after local residents had informally established the market, the city passed an ordinance declaring the area the Maxwell Street Market which halted traffic on several streets for the purpose of keeping the market open.5 The city acted again in 1931 passing an ordinance limiting merchants’ hours of operation of carts and wagons from 6:00 AM to 7:00 PM. The district had already taken on a reputation for squalor, violence, and corruption and the city sought to limit illegal activities and keep the streets clear. Merchants were also not opposed to self-regulation. In 1939, the Maxwell Street Merchants Association, consisting of 228 local store owners and 89 of the most prominent cart operators, began a campaign, the “Maxwell Street Civic Improvement Project” in an attempt to standardize procedures and improve its appearance. Part of the program was adherence to a “code of ethics” to be kept in each stall “as a reminder of success to all.” The code featured 12 “I wills” such as “I will be polite and act a gentleman at all times” and “I will use more of the 5 Ira Berkow, Maxwell Street (New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1977), 5-6. e.polis Volume V, Fall/Winter 2012 38 right kind of salesman ship.”6 All such plans to formalize the market failed in degrees; despite controlling many carts and shops in the area, most Jewish operators had moved out. This was an effort for Jewish merchants to address competition from southern blacks and Latino/as who had been moving into the area since the 1920s.7 A similar attempt occurred in 1951 when 76 Jewish merchants created the Maxwell Street Market Association for the same purpose.8 Migration of people out of the South during the first half of the 20th century was one of the most important demographic changes to occur in American history. The movement of black migrants impacted the urban landscape as much as the agricultural regions left behind.9 Migration was driven by economic opportunity provided by World War I and the halting of foreign immigration during the war years. Northern manufacturers were in desperate need of a cheap labor supply. As people left the south, the Great Migration “generated its own momentum.”10 In 1910, seventy three percent of all American blacks were rural and no city in the United States had 100,000 black residents.11 Chicago’s black population increased from 44,103 in 1910 to 109,458 in 1920, and during the Great Migration period of 1916 to 1919 anywhere between fifty and seventy thousand black southerners moved to Chicago.12 At the same, time many Mexicans went north to flee the Revolution and find better employment. In 1927, St. Francis of Assisi church on Roosevelt Road was designated a Spanish speaking parish to serve the Mexican community.13 6 “Maxwell St. To Sell Ethics by the Dozen,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 29, 1939. 7 Grove and Kamedulski, Chicago’s Maxwell Street, 18-19. 8 Russell Freeburg, “Maxwell St. Will Give In to Progress,” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 16, 1951. 9 James Grossman, Land of Hope (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989); Nicholas Lemann, Promised Land (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1991); Eric Arnesen, Black Protest and the Great Migration (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin, 2003). 10 Grossman, Land Of Hope, 3. 11 James Dorsey, Up South: Blacks in Chicago’s Suburbs, 1719-1983 (Bristol: Wyndham Hall Press, 1986), 57. 12 Grossman, 4. 13 Grove and Kamedulski, Chicago’s Maxwell Street, 116. e.polis Volume V, Fall/Winter 2012 39 Migration gained momentum until the Great Depression began to affect mobility. World War II launched a second phase of migration that trumped the black migration of the previous forty years. By 1970, “African-American culture” had transformed “from essentially rural to essentially urban.”14 Many of these migrants were from Mississippi and brought Delta blues traditions with them which they transformed, with the addition of amplification, into the Chicago Blues. Mexican migrants also brought their own market and religious traditions to the area. Maxwell was not a racial paradise, but it might be reasonable to conclude that groups got along without much incident. A 1930 report detailed antagonisms: Italians liked southern blacks less than they liked Jews, blacks were the most recent migrants – most did not arrive until after 1924 – and were also the poorest residents, they were looked down upon by Italians, and to a lesser degree, Mexicans and Jews.15 Despite evidence of tension, and despite the fact that market vendors were organized along racial lines, these cultures gave the market its ethnic character with little evidence of racial violence.

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